


Scatter Your Seeds

by runningsissors



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Post-Battle of Five Armies, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-20
Updated: 2019-01-20
Packaged: 2019-10-13 10:32:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17486492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/runningsissors/pseuds/runningsissors
Summary: 'Not for a moment had she thought of what would truly happen once she stepped out from the shadow of the trees."





	Scatter Your Seeds

**Author's Note:**

> Original prompt fill written for hobbit-kink over @ livejournal in 2015 but never published. Found as I was cleaning out my dropbox.

Touch is a delicate thing for elves, never done without purpose; always with intent. 

 

So, when a dwarf reaches out to ever so gently brush his fingers against hers, it halts Tauriel’s movement and catches her breath in a strange way.

 

He does it impossibly slow, and she swears she can feel every nerve ending coming alive as he slips his fingers between hers. The tips of his fingers lightly touch the fleshy valleys between hers, and she has the same breathless sensation as when she lands hard from the trees. His thumb brushes softly against her palm in small strokes, and Tauriel’s throat tightens. There is no meaning behind this other than the simple desire to feel, just the slide of his rough skin on her hand.

 

He does it because he can; because he wants to.

 

Elves are seldom swayed by these desires of the body. By nature, they are content and steadfast. But Tauriel is young for her people, and as time passes and the thoughts and desires of an elf change, so do the impulses and moods of their bodies.

 

And so, this simple touch stays with her much longer than it ever should.

 

She will think of it later. She will pause on the timbre of his voice, the bright glint to his eyes, the way he peered up at her through his long, dark lashes behind the bars of his cell. She’ll wonder what his laugh tastes like, if it would warm her belly if she swallowed it whole.

 

This feeling will carry her far, across a battlefield and up a desolate hill. She’ll kill for this feeling, whatever it is, strike down any who try to tear it from her.

 

It is freighting and foreign, but it is hers and she will not be parted from it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the aftermath, though the line of Durin lives on through Thorin’s nephews, it is decided amongst the dwarf chieftains that Dáin will sit as the new King Under the Mountain. Fíli has the birthright, but his bloodline is corrupted and the fear of gold sickness claiming another King is too high a risk at such a vulnerable moment. This new era of Durin’s Folk needs stability, an experienced leader who will bolster his people and help them thrive in a time where evil grows with every passing day.    

 

The company protests, but she can see it is in allegiance to Thorin Oakenshield, not his inexperienced dwarfling heir.

 

To her surprise, however, neither of the brothers fights the decision. Perhaps because Erebor had never been home the way it was for the others. They would fight for Erebor, for their rootless kinsmen, but they were born under the sky, not sprung from stone, and the Blue Mountains would always call to them.      

 

In the end, she follows a small dwarven convoy across the Misty Mountains, to Ered Luin and the halls of the late Thorin Oakenshield. The dwarves have gone to collect their kin, and she has offered her bow and her sword in service.

 

She is sure there are elven communities who would take her in, regardless of her fallen status from the halls of the Greenwood. Yet still, she stays amongst the company of dwarves, a wizard, and a small halfling on their way back to the Shire.

 

It is a futile fight to deny her feelings she knows, they all know why she lingers.

 

These feeling unnerve her though. Before, their path, this bond between her and Kíli, had been a racing current headed for a cliff’s edge, doomed to fall; to be swept away in the rapids. But now, now there is time and she does not know how to move forward. Urgency has always dictated her actions in the past, a reaction to an action.

 

Now when he stares at her across the smoke pit, his eyes a heavy weight on her skin, she knows not what to do. How to alleviate this fire licking at the pit of her stomach. In the dark of night, she still thinks of his fingers, her ears still prick at the deep rumble of his voice, her cheeks warm at the coy grins he graces her way.

 

She kept his rune stone. It seems an insult to return it, yet she is unsure if she is willing to acknowledge the weighty promise it carries.

 

There is a languid tingle the crawls up her spine when she watches him rove. He is a fine archer, something which had surprised her the first time she witnessed him snap-shooting with his brother. There is no grace to the way he loosens arrows, no fluidity to it like with elves. When he shoots his back arches and the muscles fan away from his shoulder blades, and even through the layers that protect him she can see the bulk of him. The strength of his arms, the breadth of his shoulders, the power in his legs like the trunk of a sturdy oak rooted to the ground.

 

They dance around one another, his heart the beat that moves them along.

 

That morning on the banks of the Long Lake, Kíli had called her something beautiful she is sure. She has not summoned the courage to ask, to be sure of its meaning.

 

Had truly half a dozen months passed since the battle for Erebor? Since she’d left her home in the Greenwood, never to return? Time is relative to the immortal, but when surrounded by the lives of those who do not have Eru’s favour, it seems precious.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The dwarves decide to make for a path along the no man’s land between the foothills of the Grey Mountains and the far north edge of the Mirkwood. With much of the foul creatures purged from Ered Mithrin during the battle at the Lonely Mountain, she cannot fault this plan of action. It is certainly the path the least resistance.

 

However, she cannot ignore the pain that blossoms within to see her home, the place she had sworn to protect her whole life and know she can never return to it.

 

At night she feels the forest call to her, its secret and ancient language like a siren song that fills her head. Instead, she stares at the stars and imagines waking to their soft, serene light like the first of the Eldar did.  

 

The days pass easier, listening quietly to the stories and songs the dwarves pass back and forth as they travel west, or the old legends the wizard tells as the mountain range looms overhead. Sometimes Kíli will catch her eye with a wink, and she feels the corners of her mouth lift in mirth.

 

In these moments she can almost forget what she has lost.

 

She watches him from the corner of her eye at times, pretends for his sake that she does not notice his grimace of discomfort or the way he clutches at his leg when they make camp. He is too proud to let the others know, but she sees what they choose not to. He will feel that pain for the rest of his days.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Though she does not truly need the sleep, eventually she seeks refuge in evening meditation to escape the nettled mess that is her thoughts. When the rest settle in for the night, her eyes slide shut, feigning sleep with her back to them. She flushes in shame at how cowardly her behaviour has become. 

 

She had gone scouting today, Kíli’s heavy footfall fast behind her. He’d taken her lead, bow strung as they stalked a buck into the forest. Tauriel loves to hunt, savours how the world narrowed down to the head of her arrow. He’d laughed as she shot true and firm, and her heart had raced.  


In that quiet moment, just the two of them, the desire to press her mouth to his had been strong. To _finally_ taste that hardy laugh for herself. He’d reached for her as a murder of crows sprung from the trees, and the moment was gone. 

  
Silently she mourned its passing. 

 

The dwarves drift off to sleep around her, and slowly she uncurls her body as their breaths begin to even out in slumber. As if he can tell she is avoiding her, Kíli forces her hand and lays down beside her. She can smell him, like earth, and rosin and smoke, and her body stiffens again, heat racing up her spine as her muscles tighten like a coil of rope. She tucks her hands against her chest to trap them to her.

 

The wizard and the halfling speak in hushed voices by the fire, the scent of their pipeweed clinging to the air.

 

She should rise to take watch again, allow her two waking companions to rest for the night. She makes to leave but Kíli’s arm shoots out, his hand splayed against her stomach as he pulls her back towards him.

 

“What are you doing?” She whispers, her heart a drum in her throat. Kíli’s hand slides across the dip of her hip, slips lower with the harsh rattle of his breath on her neck, and though she knows she should stop him, she will not.

 

“Doing what you won’t,” he mumbles against her shoulder, shuffling in till his knees press against the back of her thighs and she can feel the heat of him against her back. He tugs at the fastenings of her breeches till they give way, and then slides his hand lower still. She has never been touched this way, never even in her most privy thoughts has she contemplated something like this.

 

His fingers are calloused and so warm against her, and instinctively she arches against him, into his hand and this feeling that shoots out from the heel of her feet to the tips of her ears. Kíli drags his thumb in a slow circle over her, and her hand grips tight to his forearm. She can feel his pulse hammering beneath her grasp, sure as he can feel hers.

 

Do others of her race know of this, or has she stumbled upon something strange and wonderfully unfamiliar to the ways of elves. Do they know the sensations that can be pulled from their bodies? Or does this speak to the rough, intimate nature of dwarves, so free with their touch and affection with those they deem worthy of it?

 

He pulls her apart piece by piece, till she comes unbound, gasping softly, the rest tangled in her throat. She spills out around his hand like a pierced yoke, her vision glazing slightly even as she watches for any who could stumble upon them.

 

Someone snores loudly and Kíli’s quiet laugh is a deep rumble that she can feel shake through her as if it were her own. Her skin is flushed, and he presses a wet kiss to the shell of her ear, breath ragged against her as he pulls his hand back.

 

“You are so maddening beautiful,” he whispers, nose grazing her cheek when she turns to look at him. His lids are heavy, his pupils blown so wide they make his normally warm, bright eyes black as coal.

 

“I-” she starts, but Kíli reaches out and cups her cheek with his large palm, the touch of his thumb callused and wet against her skin, and her thoughts flutter like a bird from the trees. He says her name so tenderly now, and this feeling that has steadily been growing in her swells in her breast like a warm heat spreading outwards. She tilts her chin and the tips of their noses brush against one another’s ever so gently. She exhales a breath, and he is so close she can feel it ghost his lip, just the slightest movement and their lips would touch.

 

The snap of a twig in the underbrush and Tauriel’s senses come rushing back to her. She pulls away, Kíli’s hand dropping as she pushes up onto her feet.  


“I should go keep watch,” she says faintly, securing her loosened fastenings and gathering her weapons. Kíli calls after her, but she ignores him. As she hurries away, she hears his deep sigh and spares a glance over her shoulder to see him slump back to the ground.

 

When she relieves her two companions by the fire, the wizard gives her a hard-knowing stare, before bowing his head in thanks, and making his way with the halfling to sleep with the rest. Alone now, she tries to clear her mind once more, trains her eye to the horizon and stays watch till slowly the sun begins its ascent.

 

 

 

 

 

 

As a young elf, Tauriel had dreamed of one day passing beyond the veil of the Greenwood to the white, snow-capped valleys of the Mountains and out further still, to the shores of Belagaer, the great sea of the Valar. Not for a moment had she thought of what would truly happen once she stepped out from the shadow of the trees.

 

It is as they cross the Misty Mountains and enter into the old lands of Eriador, that Tauriel comes to the realization that this is the furthest she has ever ventured from the Greenwood. It is a thought that fills her heart. The veil has finally been lifted and she can now see the world around her.

 

This path she follows now is surely not one she foresaw, but she will never regret following her heart, wherever it might have led her.

 

With a two-day journey yet to Rivendell, the group rests for the night. As the sun begins to set, rays scattered and sky throwing shades of pink and violet, she finds Kíli sat a way out from the camp, nursing his sore leg.

 

“Here,” she says, sitting quietly in the tall grass beside him and passing him a poultice of ground athelas. “Put this on your leg, it will ease the pain.” He mumbles his thanks, wincing as he wraps it over his wound. They sit in silence a moment as Kíli shifts in discomfort before he gives a heavy sigh.  

 

“I’ve done this all wrong I fear,” he says, gaze cast outward towards the meadow.

 

She says nothing but feels her heart quicken at his words. She had been rather distant these past few days, her mind muddled and confused. If she gives her heart in its entirety, it will never be hers again. Once bound, it cannot be unbroken lest she loses the will to endure and go to the Halls of Mandos.  It is a heavy price to pay for the love of a mortal. Yet she was gladly willing to give her life in battle, is love not a worthier cause?

 

“It’s all backwards,” he continues, voice crestfallen “and I’m sorry for that, I guess I got rather ahead of myself. If I’m honest, I know very little about elvish things, so if I have pushed you—”

 

Tauriel reaches out and Kíli stops, eyes glancing down to where she has laid her hand on his arm. When he looks to her, she smiles, surer of this moment then she has been of anything in weeks. He smiles now in return, a grin that splits his face like a sunrise over a valley, and that warm feeling swells in her once more. She knows what this is feeling is now: it is love, pure and unreserved.

 

She understands now what Kíli had told all those months ago on the bank of the river. That he loved her, even then. Now, she is sure she loves him in return.

 

Then he surges forward, hand clasped fast to the back of her neck, fingers tangled in the tendrils of her hair, and pulls her down in a kiss. His lips feel chapped and weathered, but beneath that is a heat that makes her melt under his touch. She knows what his laugh would taste like, sweet like mead, and peaty like the smell of the forest floor. It would be a fire that licked at her belly like spiced red wine. She can feel his grin against her lips as they part, foreheads resting gently against one another.

 

As twilight sets, a zephyr blows through the trees, rustling the leaves in its wake like a soft melody. Her eyes flutter shut, as she breathes in the cool, crisp air and the wind snags her hair and whips it against her cheeks.

 

“Have you ever beheld the Great Sea?” she asks. She blinks, contented by the stroke of his fingers as they push back her flyaway strands, leaning into his touch as he drags his thumb down behind her ear.  


“Yes, many times. The Gulf of Lune in the main port of trade for the Blue Mountains. Though I must admit,” he pauses, his grin sly and eye with a glint of amusement, “large bodies of water tend to put a dwarf ill at ease.”  

 

She smiles delicately. “All elves feel a longing for the sea. It is said that in Belagaer there lives the echo of the Ainulindalë, the Music of the Ainur and that this song calls the Eldar to their true elvenhome in Valinor.” His grin encourages her, and she continues, eyes training the horizon, confiding softly, “In the Greenwood, sometimes I would climb above the canopy where the air was fresh and clear and envision when I closed my eyes that the Great Sea lay just beyond. That I could hear the roll of the waves, the spray on my face.”

 

“Then it is decided,” Kíli states, voice resolute. “Once we reach the mountains, we’ll make for the coast. Just the two of us, a company of two.”

 

“What of your kin? Of Erebor? You would leave them now, after all you have fought to reunite the two?”  


“What of them?” he asks rhetorically, his large fingers twining through her hair. “They will live at peace under the mountain and I am glad of that, but there’s no role for me in Erebor. I am no statesman, and I was never meant to be. There has never been anything to give meaning to my life except what I make of it.”

 

“Tauriel,” Kíli clutches at her waist, hand splayed against her tunic and pulls her close so their knees touch. He peers up at her, long feathered lashes and dark eyes, and she sees the unchanged vulnerable earnestness as once she saw in Lake Town. “ _You_ give my life meaning, and where you go, I will follow the rest of my days. Besides,” he says now, that lighthearted grin she has come to adore tugging at his lips, “I am a dwarf, and cannot be dissuaded so easily.”

 

She laughs, the feel of it merry and warm in her belly. “Then to the sea, we will go,” she says, leaning down so their foreheads touch once more. She brushes her lips against his gently, slowly, and feels his wide smile.

 

If Kíli can be brave, then so can she. He makes her feel alive.


End file.
